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I have just finished book 41, which puts me a bit ahead of the game for the year. Which is good since TAM will be a non-reading sort of a place. Though the flights will be good reading time.

36. The Tudors – GJ Meyer

This is a history of the entirety of the Tudors, which in reality isn’t that big — just over 100 years. Henry 7, 8, Edward 6, Mary, and Elizabeth. Unfortunately, despite claiming to be a history of all the Tudors, it was probably 3/4ths devoted to Henry VIII. There was almost nothing about Henry VII, and not nearly enough on Edward, Mary, or Elizabeth. I appreciate that there’s a lot written about all of them elsewhere, but the comprehensive claim the book makes is absurd. It should have been called Henry VIII and Family.

One thing I really liked about the book was that between each chapter about the Tudors, there was a chapter giving background on general life in England or Europe at the time. It was very helpful. I also liked the fact that, unlike most writers, Meyer had a fairly negative view of the Tudors — a very interesting shift in perspective.

B-

37. Princess of the Midnight Ball – Jessica Day George

I have two favorite fairy tales: Donkey Skin and The Twelve Dancing Princesses. This is based on the latter. The book is fairly similar to the original telling, just much expanded. I enjoyed George’s writing style, and I particularly liked how much she weaved knitting into the story. Seriously, the book has knitting patterns in the back for the knitting that took place within the story. Goofy? Yes. Awesome? Probably.

B+

38. The Family – Jeff Sharlet

I have been reading this for like 4 months. It is a slog, and incredibly depressing. Not bad, mind you, just dense. The book follows three basic stories: the rise of fundamentalism, the power the family has in American and World Politics, and the importance of political power to Christianity. I particularly enjoyed the parts about Ted Haggard, who was an even bigger player behind the scenes than I had realized, and Hillary Clinton, who I am horrified to know actually has worked with the Family on numerous occasions. As Sharlet says, in the US there is only one party, they just are smart enough to pretend like people have choices. The information is important, but not terribly well-organized, and it can be difficult to read at times. It seems to flop back and forth between third and first person too much.

B

39. The Invisible Gorilla – Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons

Non-fiction usually takes me a long time to get through. I guess because there’s no plot, or maybe because writers don’t think they have to be entertaining or provide forward motion for a book that’s mostly about facts. This book was the first non-fiction book I’ve read in a while that was easy to get through. It’s a fascinating exploration of how terrible our minds are at a lot of different things. We’re bad at noticing unexpected things we aren’t paying attention to, we’re bad at remembering things accurately, we’re bad at differentiating between confidence and skill — our intuition about our brains is usually wrong.

They talk about film editing and continuity, which I found very interesting because we know we can get away with a lot. When you’re editing, particularly non-scripted, you use a lot of stuff that has horrible continuity errors. Have people talking to each other when they’re not even in the same room, cut to a different day and pretend it’s the same one because the shirts look close enough, cut from the exterior of one car to the interior of a different car. We do some blatant crap in the editing room, and it’s almost always missed.

Another interesting thing about this book is that, during this whole Elevatorgate thing, Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear has come up a few times. I was required to read the book for a self-defense class I took in college. It was, I thought, fairly useful — though depressing, since it was basically aimed at women because women need to be vigilant at all times. It is truly a gripping book, but it talks a lot about relying on intuition, which is sort of funny next to a book that says how wrong our intuitions are. I suppose when in a situation where you feel threatened, it’s better to get out of it than to try to clinically dissect whether you’re being reasonable or not.

Not that The Invisible Gorilla really addresses anything like that, it’s just fairly anti-intuition. Anyway, the book was a fantastic read, and I recommend it highly. Particularly to anyone who thinks they’ve got an accurate memory.

A

40. Goblin Quest – Jim C Hines

This book is like reading a Dungeons & Dragons game play out, except it doesn’t suck. I know, that’s very confusing to you, it was confusing for me too. Basically, in a sort of Pratchett-esque way, it tells a very good adventure quest story while making fun of all of the conventions of adventure quest stories. Sort of meta like that. It was very entertaining, easy to read, and my only real disappointment with it was the ending, which I felt was abrupt and unnecessarily got rid of interesting characters. The interesting characters only matters because there are sequels. I did like that the end sort of emphasized how miserable it is to return to your small life after living a larger than life adventure. It’s difficult to grow and change and have everyone you know stay the same. I’m upset that my library has only the first and last in the series. I’m going to have to buy the middle one.